The Bold and the Bashful: Self-Esteem, Gender, and Relationship Initiation

Successful romantic relationship initiation often requires bold and direct action, but direct action can increase the possibility of rejection. These dual possible outcomes create interpersonal risk, which should prompt self-esteem differences in behavior. When risk is present, lower self-esteem individuals, who prefer to avoid social costs, will be less likely to use direct initiation behaviors than higher self-esteem individuals, who prefer to approach social rewards. However, eliminate social risk and these self-esteem differences in behavior will be similarly eliminated. Furthermore, reflecting gender-role prescriptions, we expected these effects to be evident among men, but not women. We test these hypotheses in a naturalistic study assessing retrospective behavioral reports and in a controlled laboratory experiment using behavioral coding to assess actual initiation behavior. Results were consistent with our hypotheses, revealing that gender moderated the links between self-esteem, risk, and initiation behavior in a manner consistent with gender roles.